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15 April 2009

Thoughts on 5th Ed IG (Cont’d)

Well this took longer than I expected to get out, especially with the holiday weekend and of course trying to get my thoughts together so I could write this. But finally here it is, my own thoughts on the new IG codex.

The Good or at least things I like. I'm going to try and keep this in some sort of order but there's no promises. First up is of course the order system. Although the range is quite short (6") some of these orders are just outstanding. The ability to rally a unit falling back, to fire an additional shot, and to count weapons as twin linked is going to be huge. Especially if you keep your Heavy weapon teams within range of the Company CO or Plt Ldr.

Now, taking some of those orders and giving them to combined squads... Imagine 3-5 squads combined so 30-50 troopers firing at an enemy unit 20 inches away. With FRFSRF you'll get between 60 and 100 lasgun shots. I'm sorry, but there's not many units that can stand up to fire like that. Another option would be to combine a few squads and tie up the enemy's CC squads. Attach a special character to this over sized unit and now you've got a 20-50 meat shields.

Special characters are going to play a HUGE role in the next codex. Something that I'm both looking forward to and dreading. On the one side it gives players (myself included) to write up fluff for our own character and include him in the game, but using the rules for a named character from the codex. Now one problem I have with that is that you have to use the wargear with that character.... oh well, I can build my model any way I want and just use counts as. I also like the ability to put special characters from the squad level all the way up to the army leader. The biggest problem I have though is that every 2nd IG player is going to be taking multiple special characters in every game.

The last thing I'm really looking forward to is Arty Batteries. I have always believed in having proper artillery support whether your on a short patrol to a long range recon. By combining 3 Bassies you can POUND a unit to the ground with arty, especially with Multiple Barrage rules. This is something that I am really looking forward to, and already have plans to bring in at least two more pieces of artillery into my army, either 2 Griffons, or one Griffon and another Bassie.

So what does this all mean for the IG and specifically my army? Well as normal the first few months are going to be hell as everyone, myself included, is going to be trying out the new options. Unfortunately it also means that the 313th Drop Troops will no be able to played as Drop Troops, it looks like I'll be working on some light infantry tactics and some combined arms tactics in the near future. The thing is though, I'm looking forward to it, even if it does mean my old play style is finished. Here's to looking at the future, and what an interesting future it looks to be.